Someday we will use our cell phone, I mean mobile device, as a portable hard drive, projector and remote control for a range of communication functions that are still add-ons, not core features. (How many people do you know who carry phones AND Blackberries?)

Until then we are all forced to email files to ourselves, so that these large attachments are floating around between Outlook and Gmail, and are easily accessible from a Mac at home, a PC at work, and a Windows Mobile phone in the airport, say. Damn devices!

So this service called SugarSync is a huge asset. It keeps files freshly updated for people on the run. Basically any file you work on, on one device, is automatically updated on the others. No version control headaches.

You could also create a folder (a “magic briefcase”) and drop any file or photo from one device to have it it accessible from the others.

For now, I use a variety of tools and services including the trusty flash drive, a wiki, a free online file storage service like DropBoks, and of course a shared drive. SugarSync will solve a lot of the runaround. Unfortunately it is not priced for everyone. At $2.49 a month for 10 gigabytes it is a good low-end solution. But if you are shuttling larger files like short videos, a folder of photographs for a presentation, and large documents –basically backing up most of the stuff on your laptop –you could easily be spending $100 a year.

Some employers might ask you to carry one of those small portable hard drives that cost $80 for 160 gigabytes, but it still won’t make every file accessible from your mobile device, and it will mean carrying around another piece of hardware.